


Lose the earth you know

by queerly_it_is



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 02:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4330722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerly_it_is/pseuds/queerly_it_is
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You're not okay.”</p>
<p>Gansey doesn’t jump, doesn’t even twitch. He’s almost used to Noah’s sudden appearances by now, the way he’s just so abruptly <em>there</em> in the corner of an eye or the shine of a car door or the middle of a sentence. One day he’d imagined how it would feel to be greeted with an awful clash of jarred nerves every time you spoke or showed your face - to the only people who <em>can</em> see you, even, the ones who mean the most to you - and he’d decided to train himself out of it. Noah deserves at least that much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lose the earth you know

**Author's Note:**

> This doesn't really take place at a specific point in the canon, but it's probably set sometime between Dream Thieves and Blue Lily.
> 
> Title from Thomas Wolfe.

“You’re not okay.”

Gansey doesn’t jump, doesn’t even twitch. He’s almost used to Noah’s sudden appearances by now, the way he’s just so abruptly _there_ in the corner of an eye or the shine of a car door or the middle of a sentence. One day he’d imagined how it would feel to be greeted with an awful clash of jarred nerves every time you spoke or showed your face - to the only people who _can_ see you, even, the ones who mean the most to you - and he’d decided to train himself out of it. Noah deserves at least that much.

“I’m fine,” he lies by rote, like there’s a set of practiced steps they have to move through before anyone really says anything. He knows that feeling incredibly well, and hates it with equal fervour every time.

He doesn’t feel it when Noah sits next to him on the bed, but the air around him cools and the book he wasn’t really reading flutters its pages next to his hand, like a wary bird. He doesn’t look up from where he’s hunched himself over his knees. Sometimes when Noah can’t muster enough energy to make himself believably solid he disappears if they stare too much, unravelled by their scrutiny. Besides, Gansey doesn’t trust whatever’s on his face at the moment.

“Where’s Ronan?”

Gansey sighs and risks a glance at Noah, hung on the dust that shines in the sunset glancing through the windows. “You don’t know?”

Noah shakes his head. It’s an eerie, disconnected motion that makes the hair on the back of Gansey’s neck stand up, and he looks away again. “I wasn’t here for that part.”

“Lucky you,” Gansey huffs. He pushes a hand through his hair to hide the shiver that the drop in temperature sends through him, gooseflesh running up his arms. “We fought, he left. Both things happened loudly. I think he’s staying with Adam tonight.” Or he hopes so. There are a lot of places for Ronan go when he’s angry, places Gansey isn’t welcome.

“He’ll come back,” Noah says. “He always does.”

Gansey nods, looking at the map on the wall, the stacks of books along the floor. He needs to reorganise them again. A few of the buildings in model Henrietta are developing a slight lean that he should probably fix. He stays where he is, crosses his legs and picks at the history book next to him, feeling awkward and small. He always ends up here doesn’t he? Stewing in the company of the dead.

“I know,” he says, all flattened breath and too little conviction.

He doesn’t doubt it, really. Of course Ronan will come back, and of course they’ll be okay again, until the very next time an argument gets punctuated by slammed doors and underlined with leaving. He doesn’t doubt; the merry-go-round has just battered him a little.

“But you’re still upset,” Noah says.

“I’m just tired,” Gansey tells him, because it’s true.

When he looks up, Noah is a little more opaque, like he’s setting in a mould. He tries to smile, to be reassuring, be himself, and it feels the same way: poured into its shape, not quite solid enough to touch. Nothing that would hold if you strung any weight on it. “Really. I’m just tired.” Tired of fixing things so they can fall apart a little later. Tired of reaching for things that only get further away. Tired of being tired.

There’s a dull ache contracting the space between his temples, beating in time with his pulse. A sour anxious lump sits in his belly. His lids scrape and he digs his knuckles into the corners of his eyes. He should get up, take his contacts out, swallow some aspirin and try to sleep. He should find his keys and go look for Ronan. He should call Adam and make sure Ronan is really there, or Blue just because she’s Blue and he’s had too many stones kicked out of his walls to hold himself back. Maybe he should text Helen so she can berate him out of this mood, provoke her into telling him how unappealing self-pity is. He should do the reading for tomorrow. He should stop _needing_ so much.

“Christ,” he groans, fingers rubbing at his eyes until bright strobes of colour replace the dimness. There’s a pressure in his throat he can’t quite breathe around, that he’s afraid to dislodge in case it starts an avalanche. He flattens his palms over his eyes like coins. “Stop that. Don’t cry, you idiot. What good will that do?”

“You might feel better,” Noah says.

Gansey laughs, a short-lived and ugly burst of sound. He drags his hands up through his hair, over his head to the back of his neck, and then drops them on the bed like they’ve been shot in mid-air. Noah watches him, head slightly tilted, eyes a little too shadowed, the inky smudge standing out on his cheek. He looks like a painting of a boy that’s been exposed to the elements too long.

“No,” Gansey says. “I don’t think I would.”

Noah extends a hand and Gansey keeps himself still as it settles like a leaf against his forehead. There's a brief scent of grass, trees, summer air. Noah’s palm is cool and smooth and intangibly different-feeling, but solid enough when Gansey presses into it, a faint thrum that’s not a heartbeat as the chill of the touch saps the fiery edge of his headache from him. He assumes it’s the ley line, humming like a generator but still _alive_ in its pulsing, its natural rhythm. The thing that connects them all, but he and Noah in a deeper way than the others. Life and death, give and take, backwards and forwards. No mystery in it for either of them.

“You need to get better at asking for things,” Noah says, looking at him seriously as a grave.

“I have enough,” Gansey mutters. _More than enough. Too much and all of it the wrong currency, can’t even give it away._

“You know what I mean,” Noah tells him. He looks slightly more present now, either through effort or as a result of whatever he’s getting from touching Gansey. He cups Gansey’s cheek, and it’s so hard to remember he’s not his body, that his bones are somewhere else, distance between the parts of him like a constellation.

Gansey’s hands clench in his lap and he fights not to let his eyes fall closed even as they prickle.

“I’m not very good at that,” he says, matter-of-factly as a film reel of all his fumbled attempts and botched gestures plays out inside his head, a long row of autopsied impulses, monstrous casualties of his inescapable apartness.

_You were born behind these walls_ , they tell him. _You are only ever peering over them_.

“You won’t get better by never trying,” Noah tells him.

“Why are you doing this?” Gansey asks, dragging the topic so it passes near him without going straight through.

“Because someone should,” Noah says, suddenly more intense. The pressure of his palm on Gansey’s skin becomes more than just a suggestion. Gansey doesn’t know if they’ve moved close enough for him to feel Noah’s breath or if Noah simply wasn’t breathing before this moment. Noah’s thumb taps Gansey’s cheekbone as he says, “Because sometimes you’re too much like me. Stop trying to change places.”

There’s really nothing Gansey can say to that, but the, “I’m sorry,” comes out anyway.

“Don’t be sorry,” Noah tells him. “Be you. What do you want that’s so bad?”

Gansey swallows and feels it all the way down, a stone dropped in a well. “I want—” he starts, and already it’s a mouthful of thorns. Stupid, selfish, shamefully greedy. “I want more,” he forces himself to say, and his hand flies up to wrap around Noah’s, press it more firmly to his cheek. He shudders as he gets colder. “I want to not feel so—so...”

“Forgotten?” Noah asks, horribly knowing, and the little flinch that burrows out of Gansey’s expression ends up right in Noah’s palm.

In the soft pink light as the sun drops away and their silence piles up like a snowdrift, Gansey feels like he’s been kindly, gently flayed.

“That’s why I’m doing this,” Noah says. Gansey remembers plants reclaiming the corpse of a red Mustang, a sad pile of a skeleton coated with earth, and the understanding slices a little deeper.

“You’re not forgotten,” he says, the prickle behind his eyes becoming a sting. “Not ever. Not by any of us.”

Noah nods, grips Gansey’s fingers, chill knuckles on Gansey’s cheek. “And neither are you.” He smiles, lets go of Gansey’s hand to poke him on the shoulder. “Now get some sleep.”

“Sleep,” Gansey says to himself, to the room with its armoury of ghosts. “God, rest.”

“Contacts,” Noah adds. “Or you’ll be sorry in the morning.”

He nods, levers himself off the bed, sways for a moment on his feet, blinking at the cavernous space around him. Suddenly all his things and furniture seem more like a delicate crust on a dark lake, only succeeding in making the empty, bloated depth more obvious.

How did he ever manage to live here alone? Who was he, then, if he found it peaceful instead of deserted?

Noah stays by his elbow as he shuffles to the bathroom, only backing off to stay well clear of the mirror, hiding his reflection from Gansey as well as himself. He fills the doorway, shadow on shadow, dark like a blood clot, watching while Gansey takes his contacts out and brushes his teeth, following Gansey’s movements like an anthropologist observing some foreign rite, intent but removed.

“Don’t worry, I don’t miss it,” Noah says as Gansey turns off the faucet, drops his toothbrush next to Ronan’s. “Not these parts anyway.” Gansey sees him move to rub at his cheek and then drop his hand. “I wouldn’t say no to some different clothes though.”

They retrace their steps to the bed and Gansey sags down onto it, drags his legs up, arranges himself like folding a map. Noah does the same opposite him, with the smallest dip in the mattress, the slightest dent left in the pillows from his head resting on them. He looks at Gansey, and there’s that familiar exposed sensation, his innermost self projected on the back of his skin, a thin membrane that Noah can peer through. Usually it makes him nervous in a vague and undefined way. Right now he’s so grateful for it that his breath jams in his throat and his fingers twitch in want of reaching out.

It’s such a subtle yearning, always pacing in the background. To be really _known_. Just the tiniest ache, a muted kind of starvation. Such an impossible, fleeting thing to find deliberately. The quest behind all other quests.

“Thank you,” he says, thickly. “For...” _All these things I don’t have practice in_. “For being here.”

Noah does something approximating a shrug, the movement made strange by the way it looks unimpeded even though he’s lying on his side. “I live here,” he says, and smiles when Gansey laughs without knowing why it’s funny, something shifting loosely in his chest. Air escapes from him in little bursts when Noah’s fingers push hair back from his forehead, run down his temple to his cheek, along his jaw. The slightest shiver curls up in the small of his back.

He closes his eyes as if he can throw a sheet over the hunger, pull the shades down on his fear, his longing. It’s all so easily undone by Noah moving closer and pressing his lips to Gansey’s forehead. The shiver digs its teeth in and sharply thrashes him about. His body betrays him in a tiny animal sound from his throat, a tightening of his fingers in the sheet, the flutter of his lashes and the sudden all-over warmth that makes Noah’s colder presence so close to him feel more undeniable, carving a fact out of his need.

Gansey’s blood staggers through him, sloshing like a drunk from wall to wall. He opens his eyes and Noah’s too close now for Gansey to see him clearly, a blurry photograph through a rain-smeared window.

“You think very loudly,” Noah says, touching their foreheads together. “No wonder you have insomnia.”

“Says someone who never sleeps at all.”

Noah grins. “I’m a restless spirit.”

They laugh, leaning against each other, hands kept close between them. Gansey rubs his smile against the pillow. Noah touches his smile slowly and deliberately to Gansey’s mouth, a reminder: _We both see each other here and now and we are not finished yet._ Gansey shuts his eyes with a faint huff when Noah strokes fingers over his lids.

“Are you staying?” he asks, weighed down by his body.

“Do you want me to?” Noah returns, and the faint teasing prod in his tone makes Gansey smile as sleep pulls him deeper, makes him slower and heavier.

“Yes,” he says on a long exhale. “I want you to.”

Noah touches his hand, his palm with all its begging. “Then I’ll stay," he says. "As long as I can.”

**Author's Note:**

> “[Death is] to lose the earth you know for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.”  
> ― Thomas Wolfe, _You Can't Go Home Again_
> 
> I can also be found [here](http://queerly-it-is.tumblr.com) on tumblr


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